Many apologies for the hiatus in my serialisation of What do we mean by local?* I am pleased to return with an extract from a chapter by David Baines, a lecturer at Newcastle university.

Hyperlocal journalism is the rage, with all manner of experiments having been tried both by individuals and traditional, commercial media.

Baines, who asks searching questions about big media's move into this arena, has written an academic text. I have taken just a few liberties to condense it into journalese...

Local newspapers proclaim themselves to be more than a service provider, but "part of the community" itself.

But commercial organisations providing local media also see "local communities" as markets. The conception of a "community" by media corporations can be determined not by the community's own sense of identity and space it occupies, but by the manner in which that community-commodity can be packaged and sold.

Many regional newspaper companies and corporations enjoy local monopolies and some refrain from competition with each other in order to efficiently commodify communities.

Changes in the way we live and work, and new technologies bringing new media platforms, have shrunk the returns to which papers have becomeaccustomed from local communities-as-markets.

New ways to shop and source goods and services have hit local papers' advertising revenue, which has led to conflict as competition for the local community-as-commodity hots up.

Newspapers, which can reach small localities do not necessarily engage with all communities which occupy those spaces.

Weekly papers, usually based in small towns, are conceptually closest to the everyday term "local paper". But many such newspapers have closed.

What do we mean by 'local' media?

"Local" papers bear names linked to geographical areas and carry news about those localities in which the papers circulate, but ownership of "local" titles has migrated to national and multinational corporations.

What are the consequences of this non-local ownership? Until the recession hit advertising revenues such groups maintained typical profit margins of around 25-35% by aggressive strategies to maximise income and minimise costs, primarily by exercising economies of scale and cutting staff.

Though the revenue is drawn from those communities in which the companies operate, the profits go to distant corporate shareholders and to service the debt burden incurred in funding their acquisitions.

This represents a substantial net financial loss for the local communities. But because much of the savings have been made through job cuts, those communities suffer further disadvantage.

As a result of the converged companies taking advantage of economies of scale, the designing, sub-editing and printing of many local weekly and daily newspapers has been centralised and takes place outside, often far outside, their circulation areas...

Local reporters are less likely to be local people than graduates who are working in an occupation "people pay to enter" and often gain admission to local newspapers through centralised recruitment departments and only after prolonged periods of unpaid "work experience" or "internships"...

There is a case to be made that within traditional "local newspaper" organisations, local communities are conceptualised in very different ways to those in which they might see themselves.

They are regarded as resources to be exploited, and this generates tensions between journalists' professional, public service values and their obligations as employees to their employers.

Despite the industry discourse proclaiming that such papers are "part of" the community, the relationships which exist between a "local" corporately-owned newspaper and the community within which it circulates are fundamentally different to those relationships which might be held to exist between individuals and other non-commercial organisations.

But if a media group sets up hyperlocal sites for the community to populate and over which the community has editorial control need it matter that the virtual space which it occupies is provided by a corporate concern?

[Baines then cites three studies - by John Myles, a lecturer at the University of East London, by City University London's Neil Thurman, and one of his own - that question, in different ways, the validity of traditional media's control of hyperlocal sites. He continues with a look at one regional publisher's efforts...]

The Northcliffe sites did employ people with journalistic skills to supply hyperlocal content to the sites, but interactivity and engagement with thecommunity was primarily facilitated through comment streams on stories.

And in the age of YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, the ubiquitous camcorder and the smartphone which can instantly upload text, still and moving images to websites and social media streams... the print paradigm dominated the local papers' hyperlocal sites.

Thurman concluded: "Print publishers… bring structural and cultural qualities that may hold back the development of hyperlocal news as both an empowering medium and a commercial enterprise".

Do the independents do it differently?

Internet-based hyperlocal news sites perform local paper functions as "town criers", informing local communities about local affairs, and this is part of their attraction to local newspaper companies.

But because they are web-based, they inevitably position those addressed communities within globally interconnected perspectives – a process which has been conceptualised as "glocalization". This global-local interaction is characterised by a complex range of dynamics...

Media work is essentially made up of collaborative processes, but the collaboration in producing "journalism" need not necessarily involve a "journalist" or media organisation.

And the community-sustaining bit of what is going on might lie as much in the process of collaboration, conversation and discovery as in the product – the story, the text, the image, the video, or the stream of contributions to the social media site.

They also facilitate economic interactions – which are also of concern to local communities and might be necessary if the sites are to be sustainable.

A rural community in my study of hyperlocal media wanted to know what was happening in their small town, but they also wanted the wider world to know.

Independent hyperlocal sites which are neither grounded in the print paradigm, nor hosted in the shadow of a print product are also able to be more experimental about the journalism they are doing.

A study by a colleague and myself suggested that hyperlocal news sites offered opportunities for journalists to start their own entrepreneurial and independent media businesses.

It also allowed journalism students to enhance their employability, experience and reflect on journalism's role and purpose beyond the industrial model and sustain professional practice and values at a time when industrial local journalism was in decline.

Independent hyperlocal operations are often precarious and can depend on the enthusiasm and availability of a single person – but they can build greater strength and sustainability through networks.

As a variety of approaches develop, each embedded in a particular locality, I would argue that a range of sustainable commercial models are likely to emerge, each supporting an independent media operation (or several operations).

These may support and sustain a community's need to know what is happening in its world; and which might also help to develop new ways to do journalism and sustain what is valuable in the way good journalism is practised today.

Tomorrow: How Bristol Evening Post assistant editor Richard Coulter went back to genuine community journalism

*What do we mean by local? is edited by John Mair, Neil Fowler & Ian Reeves and published by Abramis. Available at a special Media Guardian price of £12 from richard@arimapublishing.co.uk